A Climate Guilt Trip

How many plants do I need to keep in my room to offset my carbon dioxide output?

This piece was written in the Fall and edited this past week.

I was walking down Ashmun along the Grove Street Cemetery when I saw a tree shaped like the letter “Y” – branches parted down the middle to make way for a power line. I took a photo and then realized nearly every tree was shaped the same. I just don’t look up at the sky enough.

I found a shallot in my cabinet a few days ago. I had left it nestled in a dark corner for days on end. Instead of growing mold, it sprouted. I placed it in a tray of water and it grew almost desperately.  

My roommates and I took pride in unplugging our kettle until a friend told us kettles don’t have circuits to sap energy from. 

I wanted to buy deodorant off Amazon, so I thought batching my order with other essential items was less environmentally harmful. But each product came in separate boxes on different days.

Google commits to being carbon free by 2030. Apple, carbon neutral by 2030. Amazon, carbon neutral by 2040. 

How many plants do I need in my room to offset my carbon dioxide output?

A UK-based organization called EarthRise wants to unpack climate change. It wants to “untangle all the hard data, jargon and abstract graphs that have for too long dominated the climate conversation.” Is it the data we have a problem understanding or the convenience we have a hard time refusing? Or that our individual contributions pale in the face of what corporations and governments can do.

I keep two plants in my room. 

During the intermission of a Willow Smith concert last year, a speech by Greta Thunberg played on screen. I took a picture of the enlarged Greta Thunberg and captioned it, “mid-concert climate change reminder.” I posted it on Instagram, and drove home thinking about how I found Willow’s family in the crowd.

On a Future Perfect podcast titled “The meat we eat affects us all,” Sigal Samuel asks neuroscientist Lori Marino why we eat pigs even when we know pigs are intelligent. She explains to us that humans are good at compartmentalizing.

I am good at compartmentalizing when standing in front of the arepa cart on Science Hill. Or when I’m craving chicken nuggets. Or when I make shrimp fried rice.

My dad hears birds chirping outside and thinks quarantine mandates might give other beings the freedom to roam more freely. Working from home has decreased roadkills, but the number of human lives lost from Covid-19 is incomparable.

Two months after our conversation, cities near my dad and across the West Coast begin to burn. People use Mars and sci fi movies to describe Los Angeles and San Francisco. Meanwhile, trees that were supposedly too large to burn down burned down.

What does it mean to save ourselves from our own destruction?

I imagine all our plastic waste, our food waste, our nuclear waste gurgling up from the deep earth from which we’ve buried it. My pile of recyclable Amazon boxes won’t change a single thing.

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As you can tell from this piece, I’m no climate expert. But my good friend, Alanis Allen is! She launched a Twitter this week for the Connecticut Office of Climate Planning. Give them a follow for some more hopeful/actionable climate updates!